


Apogee

by confettiinmyhair



Series: Fever Dreams [3]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: BDSM, Blindfolds, Consensual Violence, Insomnia, M/M, Masturbation, Sleep Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-07 08:59:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6797581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/confettiinmyhair/pseuds/confettiinmyhair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Will's coping mechanisms prove less and less effective, Hannibal offers a different sort of comfort.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Apogee

The dull burning sensation in his nerves was making it difficult to concentrate on Hannibal’s words, on anything but the tone of the speech, and he had to force himself to focus, a deep breath, a curling of the toes in his shoes, careful not to shift his weight too much in the process.  
  
“Sorry, what?” Will asked, perhaps too rushed.  
  
“I asked how long it’s been this time.”  
  
His unsteadiness hadn’t gone as unnoticed as he’d hoped. Will let his eyes slide shut, ticking back the calendar days, felt himself shrug.  
  
“Anything even hedging on a full night? Thursday,” he said quietly, opening his eyes and tracing a finger along the edge of the bookshelf, the titles on the leather spines more like vague background noise than actual words.  
  
Thursday, which was two days after - well.  
_Well_ , was how he uncomfortably described the incident to himself. He still didn’t want to acknowledge quite how right it had felt to taste his own blood on the other man’s mouth.  
  
“Half a week? Impressive.”  
  
He flashed a questioning glance at Hannibal, who merely shrugged, leaning back ever so slightly in his chair.  
  
“Impressive that you can even string a sentence together, at that rate.”  
  
Will inclined his head permissively at that and continued his agitated pace, his finger dragging along the flat of the wood. No dust came up on his skin, he noticed.  
  
“There’s just… it doesn’t even matter if I sleep or not, there’s… all of these minutiae percolating around up here,” he said, gesturing to his head before he pinched the bridge of his nose, “and I’m running out of functional shutoff valves, so to speak.”  
  
He was almost to the corner of the shelves when Hannibal’s voice stopped him mid-stride - something about the tone of the words.  
  
“You know, I’d hoped to discuss this once your sleep patterns had settled down, but it looks like that might take some time.”  
  
“Discuss… what, now?” Will turned to look at him. The shift in Hannibal's posture was subtle, but he caught it - that little overall relaxation, even as his shoulders squared up ever so slightly, and it somehow brought big hunting cats to mind.  
  
“Do you remember what you said to me, the night that you slept on the sofa?”  
  
A nod was his only response. He found himself fighting the sudden compulsion to toy with the hem of his shirt. He’d known that this was going to come up in due course, had known that he was going to have to endure Hannibal picking him to pieces on the subject of the dreams. When Will didn’t say anything, Hannibal went on.  
  
“You said that you enjoy… what was the phrase that you used? ‘A little bit of controlled violence’?”  
  
“That-” Will blinked in mild shock. He’d been prepared to have to explain himself about the murder fantasies, so what was-? “Yes. Well-remembered.”  
  
He paused for a moment before he spoke again.  
  
“I’m sorry, are you offering something?”  
  
Hannibal regarded him quietly for a moment.  
  
“A functional shutoff valve, unless I’m very much mistaken.”  
  
In retrospect, he’d wonder at the ease with which he responded, even through the mild misapprehension he felt.  
  
“I’m listening.”  
  
“Would I be correct in presuming that, for you, it has more to do with the pain than with the submissive aspect?”  
  
Will shrugged again, scratching idly at the back of his neck.  
  
“They’re difficult to separate, but ultimately, yes.”  
  
“An urge indulged in even more rarely than your occasional one-night stands?”  
  
“Putting it mildly,” Will said, not bothering to mask the sarcastic edge in his voice.  
  
“Trust issues?”  
  
“With good reason.”  
  
Hannibal leaned forward ever so slightly in the chair, something almost like a smile at the corners of his lips.  
  
“Do you trust me, Will?”  
  
Insomuch as he trusted anybody, he supposed that he did.  
  
“Sure,” he nodded, realizing suddenly that he’d had a grip on the shelf behind him and letting go.  
  
Hannibal merely gestured at the floor in front of his chair. Will swallowed down his trepidation and moved to cross the room towards him, feeling the hesitance evaporate as he went, feeling the world re-focus itself ever so slightly.  
  
“Hand me your glasses,” Hannibal said, quietly, reaching a hand out as he stood.  
  
Will complied, folded the arms in, and watched blearily as Hannibal set them on the little table next to his chair. Before he could say anything at all, the man had stepped all but flush up against him, his hands already working the buttons open on Will’s shirt. It was strange. Not uncomfortably so, but certainly strange.  
  
He let Hannibal begin to undress him without speaking, mentally settling in between enjoying the simple feeling of the personal attention and… frankly, wondering at it. Unfocused as his vision was without his glasses, he could make out the expression of calm concentration on Hannibal’s face as he moved.  
  
He was losing himself a little bit, already, in the touches along his shoulders as Hannibal pushed his shirt off, in the touches along his sides as he moved to work Will’s belt open.  
  
“Push your shoes off,” Hannibal said, dragging a thumb along the edge of Will’s left hipbone.  
  
Reluctantly, Will took a step back out of the touch, toeing out of his shoes and reaching down to pull his socks off. He looked up at Hannibal for a moment as he reached down to pull his jeans open himself, caught the way Hannibal was watching his hands.  
  
“Rather do the honors yourself?” he asked, teasing, and saw Hannibal’s responding grin.  
  
“Take them off,” he said, not answering directly, “and get on your knees.”  
  
Will didn’t rush, but didn’t make a show of it, tempting though the notion was.  
He got his fly and button open, got the jeans and boxer shorts pushed down, stepped out of them, and lowered himself one knee at a time.  
  
When he looked up again, Hannibal was removing his tie, taking out the careful knot at his throat, and Will watched silently. He was naked on the man’s floor, and somehow the sight of him removing that solitary piece of his carefully chosen armor was almost disturbingly more intimate.  
  
“Do you trust me?” he asked again, and Will nodded.  
  
Without another word, Hannibal held the tie in both hands, moving to wrap it around Will’s head and knot it in the back, the thicker end covering his eyes.  
  
“You can tell me if you want to stop. This is for you, after all.”  
  
Will shook his head, failing to hold back a chuckle, felt Hannibal’s hands on his wrists, moving his hands so he was clutching his own forearms at the small of his back.  
  
“Spread your knees a little. No, a little more,” he said, and Will complied, shuffling his legs apart.  
  
Hannibal’s hands were on him again, guiding him forward and down, his shoulders and chest against the floor now, face turned to the side.  
  
His legs were still spread, ass in the air, and he was thoroughly aware of how hard he already was. He gasped quietly at Hannibal’s nails dragging up the backs of his legs, let himself groan as Hannibal dragged a thumb over his perineum.  
  
He couldn’t help the words that came out of his mouth, even as he was fighting the urge to press himself back into the touch.  
  
“If you went to all this trouble just to fuck me, I’m gonna laugh.”  
  
It wasn’t hard to hear the smile in Hannibal’s response.  
  
“You want that, though, don’t you?”  
  
His fingertips were pressing into Will’s left ass cheek, then moving, the fingernails digging into the skin, and he stopped resisting the urge to move into the sensation.  
  
“Yes. And no.”  
  
“Tell me what you want, then.”  
  
“Anything. Everything,” he said, gritting his teeth as the contact broke, heard Hannibal stand, heard a rasping of fabric.  
  
“Anything,” was the answer, not quite the question it should have been.  
  
“Any time you f-” he didn’t finish, yelping as the pain shot through his body.  
  
When he could think again, moments later, he was aware of how he’d moved, of the way his cheek burned from the rough shock of friction against the carpet, aware that his hands were still clutched behind his back.  
  
His belt. Hannibal had hit him with his own belt.  
  
“Too much?” he heard from somewhere behind him, gentle yet mocking.  
  
“Fuck you,” he shot back, heard Hannibal chuckle, and braced himself.

**

To call this a delight was to understate wildly.  
  
It was, perhaps, not the height of the ways he’d imagined having the man - and _how_  - but to see him so simultaneously open and wanting and still so _stubborn_ was one of the longer shots he’d imagined.  
  
He kept the pace light, pausing between each blow that they might not simply bleed together.  
  
He wondered what must be running through Will’s mind, wondered if even now he was clinging to the evisceration fantasies through the pain, wondered if he was thinking of anything but the immediate sensations.  
  
The early gasps gave way to half-sobbed groans in time, but Will never did ask him to stop.  
  
It was about twenty minutes before he finally stopped on his own, needed to take a breath.

He crouched, resisting the urge to sink his teeth into the striped, reddening flesh of Will’s upper thighs and backside, to taste the way the skin changed with the abuse. Allowing himself a moment to admire the way the muscles in Will’s back were straining, he leaned down further.  
  
“You need only say so,” he said, quietly, inches from Will’s ear, “and it’s over.”  
  
He huffed out a laugh, coughed to clear his throat, and Hannibal could see the grin spreading on his lips.  
  
“Why? That all you’ve got in you?”  
  
His voice was rough, but the playful venom in his words suggested that he was far from breaking.  
  
“Do you trust me?” he asked, yet again, pushing a hand into Will’s hair just below the knot of the tie.  
  
“Obviously,” was the wavering response, Hannibal took hold of the tie, pulling the knot up gently, pulling the fabric away.  
  
Will’s eyes opened, noticeably red-rimmed, his gaze not seeming to focus on anything particularly. He blinked slowly, and looked up, expression blatantly petulant.  
  
“Get on with it, then.”  
  
So be it.  
  
He stood, taking a deep breath to ground himself, rolled his shoulders, and centered his focus.  
  
**  
  
Will had been through far rougher beatings in his life, but this?  
  
This was just what he’d been needing.  
  
He’d lost track of time a few minutes in, was sure that Hannibal was holding back on him, was more awake now than he’d felt in weeks, was harder than he could remember being in years.  
  
He could feel how red his face was, could feel the strain creeping into his bad shoulder, wanted to drown in how good his whole body felt.  
  
And then it had stopped. He’d felt Hannibal’s breath on him before he’d spoken, had had to collect himself enough to even speak.  
  
He was already coming down, and, hell, hadn’t even really reached proper oblivion.  
  
He knew how wrecked his throat was already, and he didn’t give a damn.  
  
He wanted to keep the blindfold on, wanted to keep all of that visual noise out, but he was past really fighting about it.  
  
Craning around as well as he could, he looked right up at the man, quirking an eyebrow as he spoke.  
  
“Get on with it, then.”  
  
Hannibal stood, moved out of his line of sight, and then… nothing.   
  
It wouldn’t be the first time he'd inadvertently insulted a partner into stopping.  
  
But then, oh then, he clearly hadn’t.   
  
**  
  
The first round would have left Will sore for a few days at most, would have left him giddy on the endorphins for an hour or two.  
  
This was going to well and truly _hurt_.  
  
He made sure not to break skin, but his earlier restraint was otherwise gone.  
  
Will’s skin was purpling in minutes, the half-groans graduating to full, sustained sobs, and yet there was no mistaking the way the man’s hips were canting whenever he paused.  
  
It hit him, suddenly, that Will could be nurtured into the perfect victim just as easily as he could be made into the perfect accomplice.  
  
In and of itself, it was not a fresh consideration, but the man’s open, pure physical masochism combined with the reality of his empathetic tendencies presented a fascinating possibility: the possibility of a truly eager victim.  
  
He stopped, tossed the belt onto the pile of Will’s clothing, took a moment to stretch his arms.  
  
It wasn’t remorse, or revulsion that stopped him - he’d simply invested too much time into this experiment to see it over so soon. There were months - maybe years - before he’d need to make that decision.  
  
He crouched back down, put his hand back into Will’s hair gently, smiled as the man turned into the touch.  
  
If Will had been unfocused before, he was all but _absent_ from his body now, but that reaction remained.  
  
He touched Will’s shoulder, rubbed gently, licked his lips before he spoke.  
  
“Will. Come back, hmm? Just a little.”  
  
**  
  
His higher thought processes had blanked out on him almost immediately. He hadn’t been able to keep his eyes shut, knew that he was focusing on the jarringly blue sofa in the corner, but otherwise, he was lost to simply letting himself _feel_.  
  
In a more poetic mood, he’d later muse, he’d likely refer to it as “utter Nirvanic blankness”, but even that wouldn't have done it justice.  
  
He was aware of the noises he was making, the tightness in his body, the way he felt not-quite-close-enough to coming for the duration, the way he simply let himself experience it for its whole.  
  
He wasn’t sure when it stopped, but he was aware of being touched, heard Hannibal speaking.  
  
When he really came back to himself, he was aware of the rough, unabashed laughter in his throat, drunk on the endorphins flooding his body.  
  
“Look at me?”  
  
Will flexed his shoulders, let himself let go of his forearms, turned his face towards Hannibal’s voice.  
  
“Look me in the eyes, Will.”  
  
He blinked, forced himself to focus, took in the sight of the man looking down at him.  
  
“If you want to, you can take yourself the rest of the way. I’ll be right here.”  
  
Somehow, he understood what Hannibal was telling him.  
  
He pushed one of his arms up, bracing his forearm on the floor as he reached down with the other hand.  
  
His own whimper was loud in his ears as he got his fingers wrapped around the base of his cock.   
  
He was sticky with precome, wanted to simply fuck his own fist, gave into the urge without hesitation.  
  
Hannibal’s hand was in his hair again, gripping right down at the roots, and Will chased the thread of his need frantically, perfectly conscious of the stinging ache in his bruising skin and clinging to the pain as he moved.  
  
Hnnibal’s lips were by his ear once again, and for all Will knew, it was his own imagination, but he heard the words clear as day:  
  
“I’d devour every last piece of you. I’d let it take years, savor it. They’d never find the last shred of you.”  
  
The noise he made as he came didn’t even resemble words, little more than a drawn-out series of desperate shouts as he felt the semen coating his fingers.  
  
**  
  
Hannibal let him simply lie on his side, not moving, not speaking, for quite some time.  
  
The man’s hand was on Will’s shoulder the whole time. He sat there quietly, patiently, scratching something in a notebook with his other hand, as Will gradually re-grounded himself in his body.  
  
When he felt steady enough to stand and walk, he allowed Hannibal to help him out of the office and upstairs to the main house.  
  
He’d allowed himself to be wrapped in some sort of fleece blanket, had nodded at Hannibal’s assurances that he’d return as he was sat on a sofa - not a sofa, _the_ sofa.   
  
It was a matter of minutes before Hannibal returned with a hot, strong cup of tea and some toast.   
  
He sat next to Will on the couch, again waiting patiently as he ate and drank.  
  
“I feel inclined to offer you a bed tonight, all things considered. Unless you’d prefer the sofa, of course,” he finally said as Will drained the glass.  
  
“Didn’t take you for a cuddler, honestly,” Will said, focusing on the flavor of the tea more than anything, his voice thankfully less hoarse than it had been right after.  
  
“Not what I had in mind, though I’m willing, if you require it.”  
  
“No. Given a choice, no,” Will said resolutely.  
  
“There it is, then. Now, shall I see to the guest room?”  
  
“That’s… alright," Will shook his head, pulling the blanket around himself more snugly. "Pillow might be nice, though.”  
  
Hannibal nodded, got up to go and find one.  
  
When he came back, Will was already curled up at one end of the couch, only just awake enough to accept the pillow.  
  
“What did you say to me, at the end?” he asked quietly as he settled back.  
  
Hannibal considered his question for a moment, that not-smile at the corners of his mouth again.  
  
“Exactly what you needed to hear. Sleep now, hmm?”  
  
He watched Hannibal turn and step away and let himself really sink against the pillow, concentrating on nothing more than the feeling of the blanket on his skin as he shut his eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> Full confession: as I've mentioned in previous parts, this is a repost of some [rather old fic work on tumblr](http://hoverboardbandit.tumblr.com/post/49998465803). 
> 
> The lines at the beginning of this installment, referencing an incident with Will tasting his blood on Hannibal's mouth, is in reference to either something from an episode I'm completely misremembering, or is in reference to another fic that has been lost to the void of the internet.
> 
> I'm reasonably certain it's the latter, but I have absolutely no idea what I was talking about, and it's as frustrating for me as it may be for you.
> 
> (It's not in reference to part 2 in this series, either - the timeline doesn't match up, and I know there had to be a piece of writing bridging the gap there. I distinctly remember writing it, but can't track it down.)
> 
> This was, however, the final piece of Hannibal writing I ever did (aside from a one-off WillBev fic that I can't seem to find now), so I'd like to thank anyone who made it through all of this.


End file.
